Each edition of the Horizon Report introduces six emerging technologies or practices that are likely to enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years.

The technologies featured in the 2009 Horizon Report are placed along three adoption horizons likely timeframes for their entrance into mainstream use for teaching, learning, research, or creative applications.

The first adoption horizon assumes the likelihood of entry into the mainstream of institutions within the next year; the second, within two to three years; and the third, within four to five years.

In the first adoption horizon we find mobiles and cloud computing, both of which are already well established on many campuses — and still more organizations have plans in place to make use of these technologies in the coming months.

Institutions at the leading edge of technology adoption are also already applying the two clusters of technologies we have placed on the mid-term horizon, geo-everything and the personal web.

All four topics on the first two horizons are already in common use in other sectors, including entertainment, commerce, and the world of work. The two technologies placed on the far-term horizon, semantic-aware applications and smart objects, are not yet commonly found in an educational context, although research is being conducted in both areas and the rate of development seems to indicate that these topics are well worth watching.

[Quoted from the executive summary and the first chapter]

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via Smart Mobs

Abstract
Technological advances in sensing, computation, storage, and communications is turning people as sensors of their own environment. Indeed, the increasing deployment of wireless and mobile devices produce new types of dynamic urban data that people generate by passively and actively interacting with these ubiquitous technologies. In this talk, I will illustrate through a few examples how the analysis and visualization of these data gives the ability to show previously invisible urban dynamics resulting in opportunities to inform the urban design, planning and management processes. Moreover, the increasing integration of these technologies into the fabrics of our lives could create more responsive cities in which authorities, service providers and citizens can monitor urban processes and react to events in real-time. Finally, I will ponder these opportunities by highlighting the complex socio-technical assemblage that challenges researchers and practitioners in designing the integration of these new dynamic urban information into people’s daily life.

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KiBu will be presenting three projects at the upcoming Lift09 conference. Check also KiBu’s One Year book (pdf -28 mb), which includes all of its projects: mobile expressions, intelligent and charming things, dynamic media interfaces, community technologies and workshops. A few photos of my visit can be found here.

Although the global UPA website has not yet been updated, UPA Voice confirms the news.

Zimmermann is the first European to head the international organisation which has over 10,000 members from all over the world.

Silvia Zimmermann, who was a founder of UPA Switzerland, is in charge of the Swiss Institute for Software Ergonomy and Usability in Zurich, and became a UPA vice-president in 2008. She was also a co-organiser of the December 2008 European UPA conference on usability and design, in collaboration with co-chair Michele Visciola, president of Experientia (see photo).

Her major focus now is increasing the internationalisation of the UPA: “The dominance of the USA with regards to internet and software matters is often criticised. Our work at UPA shows that usability is a global matter. Experts from Europe and Asia are heavily involved in creating more useful technology.”

“Freedom of speech and the right to assemble are limited in Egypt, which since 1981 has been ruled by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party under a permanent state-of-emergency law. An estimated 18,000 Egyptians are imprisoned under the law, which allows the police to arrest people without charges, allows the government to ban political organizations and makes it illegal for more than five people to gather without a license from the government. Newspapers are monitored by the Ministry of Information and generally refrain from directly criticizing Mubarak. And so for young people in Egypt, Facebook, which allows users to speak freely to one another and encourages them to form groups, is irresistible as a platform not only for social interaction but also for dissent.”

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“The project brings together a distinguished collection of Internet observers, scholars, innovators, entrepreneurs, activists, technologists and still other experts, to write short essays, to foster an on-going public dialogue, and to create a durable record of how the rules of cyberspace are being formed, potentially impacting their future incarnation. [...]

Through this series of essays, we hope to generate a discussion among global stakeholders and netizens regarding rule-making and governance on the net, and in the process, to envision the net of the future. We will cast fundamental questions that will intrigue both experts and laypeople, by asking who should (or shouldn’t) control cyberspace? Can it be governed? Who decides?

Through this process, we will consider how best to protect our common resources, how to balance individual freedoms with community rights, public action with private activity, national security with personal expression, intellectual property protections with open access. In echoing historical dilemmas, we will ask how cyberspace stimulates innovative thinking regarding authority and rules and how those ideas might shape the future “constitutions” of the net.”

Ethan Zuckerman, who also contributed one of the essays, provides some more background:

“John Palfrey’s thinking in launching Publius was to recognize that the emergence of American constitutional democracy didn’t occur in a single moment of crystalline brilliance. It was the product of years of argument, conversation and deliberation, through media like the Federalist papers. Palfrey argues that we’re going through a long, complex constitutional moment as regards the internet, constructing the laws and norms that will govern how we interact with one another through the infrastructure of the internet. As such, Publius is an invitation to post arguments, to ask for the Internet to behave one way or another and make the case for one’s point of view.”

Here are my preferred essays:

The Polyglot Internet
Essay by Ethan Zuckerman on the need for focused efforts to make translation cheaper, easier and far more common to enable global discussions

One Missed Call?
Essay by Ken Banks on refocusing our attention on the social mobile long tail

The Latent Community in Every Webpage
Essay by Clay Shirky on the increased ability of otherwise uncoordinated groups to achieve their shared goals

“The story is unique for its ability to tell an engaging story while intermingling technologies that we are only beginning to imagine, but that might one day become a part of our everyday lives.”

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“Let’s look in turn at the general lesson each of them has to share and then what specific steps arts & cultural organisations can explore to take advantage of the opportunities they present.”

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There is a trend among some in the UX community to take the U out of UX and refer to our discipline simply as experience design. One reason for this change in terminology is that it lets us talk about a specific target audience in terms that resonate with business stakeholders more than the generic term user—for example, customer experience, patient experience, or member experience. The other reason for using the term experience design rather than user experience design is that it recognizes the fact that most customer interactions are multifaceted and complex and include all aspects of a customer’s interaction with a company or other organizational entity, including its people, services, and products. Customer interactions encompass much more than the usability of a particular user interface. They include all of the social and emotional consequences of a customer’s interaction with an organization or brand, including trust, motivation, relationships, and value.

But if the name of the discipline is evolving and the focus of design is expanding, does that mean the design methods are different? Are traditional usability and user-centered design activities useful for gaining insight into the broader implications of the emotional impacts of a design? Or do we need different approaches? To explore these questions, it is helpful to look at the strengths and weaknesses of two existing alternative design approaches:

• user-centered design
• genius design

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Complexity is preventing uptake and usage of mobile applications and services, according to a survey of US and UK consumers commissioned by mobile device management (MDM) specialist Mformation. 95% of consumers surveyed indicated that they would be more likely to try new mobile services if setup was easier. Complex setup issues are also preventing 45% of people from upgrading to new, more sophisticated mobile phones. Moreover, 61% of these mobile users say phone setup is as frustrating as changing a bank account.

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An open project between BugLabs and IDEO, this deep-dive exploration of the BUGbase UI is focused on re-envisioning the BUGbase interface with an eye toward integrating new display and input technologies.

The outcome of these explorations will feel less like a finished product and more like a concept car. And like any successful concept car, we hope these provocations will not only help us gauge users’ interests, but will spur constructive discourse and inform future design, engineering, and business decisions.

BugLabs’ commitment to openness presents a unique and exciting opportunity for us to be as inclusive about the design process as possible. For this quick two week collaboration, we will be conceptualizing new interface paradigms, designing new tangible user interface directions, and creating the associated industrial design/housing-modification solutions.

We will be sharing as much as possible over the next week and a half and welcome your comments, thoughts, and feedback. Start typing!

“The objective of the meeting was to explore ways to boost the social innovation dimension of the Renewed Social Agenda with which the Barroso Commission has put Social Europe back at the heart of its policies. [...]

Social innovation means the design and implementation of creative ways of meeting social needs. It covers a wide field ranging from new models of childcare to web-based social networks, from the delivery of healthcare at home to new ways of encouraging people to use sustainable means of transport. Social innovation can help in the development of better models of eldercare, or in finding new ways to change work and travel habits to cut carbon emissions, or new ways to accompany and support young people in their transition to adulthood.”

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(via eGov Monitor)

Abstract
Whether you’re designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, today’s digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology.

Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.

NetLife Research, who is behind this initiative, got over 100k downloads last year, and are aiming even higher this year.

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“It has become the kitchen tool of choice for chefs and home cooks. They use it to keep grocery lists, find recipes, photograph their handiwork, look up the names of French cheeses, set timers for steak and soft-boiled eggs, and convert European or English measurements to American ones.”

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Palm, which launched a new flagship device and platform earlier this month, is a company staring at the very real possibility of extinction. The pioneering user experience of its PDAs has long since been super-seeded by smartphones, while its own range of Treo handsets lacks differentiation and is rapidly losing market share to competitors. It is in a precarious financial position, burning cash as its top-line revenues fall and relying on a single private equity investor (Elevation Partners) to keep it afloat.

It is difficult, therefore, to overstate the importance of the new Palm Pre device and webOS platform. Pre needs to succeed by selling millions of units in the first year and webOS must establish itself as a viable alternative to the other software platforms on the market, demonstrating differentiated features and an ability to attract third party developers.

If we set aside the hype surrounding the launch, this scenario provides a valuable case study in how refocusing a company on the importance of user experience can be at the heart of a business revitalisation strategy.

In developing Pre and webOS, Palm has been forced to take a long look in the mirror and ask itself some searching questions about what really defines the company. Interestingly, the answers it has come up with are very similar to the founding principles which helped it achieve success in the PDA market

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The stock of Starbucks Coffee, long revered as a prime example of a consumer-focused, experience-oriented business, was down over 50 percent in 2008 (underperforming the S&P 500 Index during the same period). With one of the poster children for the “Experience Economy” performing so poorly during the current recession, some CEOs may be questioning the value of experience-oriented business investments, if not revisiting the entire concept of an experience-oriented business strategy.

What’s a CEO to do during a time like this, with the Experience Economy apparently showing that it is not impervious to recessionary environments?

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Nokia and Securitas today announced a new cooperation regarding mobile services for personal security and every day safety. Mobile devices already today give increased feeling of security with friends and family only a text message or a phone call away. By combining the main competencies of companies within security and mobility, Securitas and Nokia plan to cooperate by introducing attractive and affordable security services in Nokia mobile devices. GPS enabled mobile devices are soon to be as common as the camera making this a mass market service.

The service Securitas Safe-2-Go makes it possible to, for example, get help in an exposed situation, but also gives increased security through information regarding the location of friends and family. Securitas Safe-2-Go initially contains four services, Assist where you can, with the touch of a button, get connected to Securitas alarm central which has information about who is connecting, where this person is located and which people related to the person need to be contacted. Find, where you can get the current position on where friends are located. Zone, where you receive an SMS if someone leaves or comes into a predefined area, like a school or a home. And finally, Friends, which gives an overview of where all friends are located. Securitas Safe-2-Go will be launched commercially during the first half of 2009 in Sweden and be launched in other European countries later during 2009.

…

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Alice Rawsthorn, the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, was inspired too and devoted an article to them and the nascent discipline of service design, and its role for public services in particular:

What sort of help would you need if you were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis? Medical advice, of course, but you’d also have concerns that a doctor or nurse might not be able to address. Will you have to stop work? Use a wheelchair? Choose a caregiver? And how can you contact other people with MS?

All important questions, but how should a local health service deal with them? This was the dilemma faced two years ago by the Ealing Primary Care Trust, which runs the government-funded National Health Service for the 315,000 residents of Ealing in west London. The local MS clinic had closed, and the trust was under fire from the Multiple Sclerosis Society, which campaigns on behalf of people with MS. The trust needed to find a solution, but wasn’t sure how to choose the right one.

It secured funding from the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement to commission the service design consultancy Live|Work to advise it on how best to care for the 400 or so local people with MS. The result shows how the young, increasingly fashionable discipline of service design can work in practice by tackling a serious social problem.

It’s a nice article and I am pleased for Lavrans, Ben and Chris of Live|Work with this beautiful exposure.

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The latest report: “India: The Impact of Mobile Phones” (pdf) contains five meaty research contributions with lots of data:

• A policy overview by Dr. Rajiv Kumar
• An econometric analysis of the impact of mobile by Professor Rajat Kathuria, Dr. Mahesh Uppal and Mamta
• The impact of mobiles on agricultural productivity by Sanjay Gandhi, Dr. Surabhi Mittal and Gaurav Tripathi
• A survey of usage of mobile in poor urban areas by Professor Ankur Sarin and Professor Rekha Jain
• The impact of mobiles in the SME sector by Dr. Mahesh Uppal and Professor Rajat Kathuria